President's Day Weekend: SF and Spinach Almond Pesto Pasta!

It’s amazing what a little
rain can do. Being stuck inside also means I get a lot of stuff done. I was
done making my lunches for the entire week before 1pm! Almost finish reading
The Hobbit which I thought I’d never do, I swear it might have taken me longer
to read it than for the filmmakers to film the darn thing.

It’s an odd day today; it
actually feels like winter again. Heavy rains and even hail at one point, but I
suppose a little rain is harmless, this winter is a bit dry compared to past
winters and scary as it sounds spring is around the corner and soon enough
it’ll be summer again… though I love warm weather, I despise the heat. As I
always say, when its cold, you can put on the layers and curl up in a blanket
but it doesn’t work the other way around. If it’s too hot, you can only shed so
much before you need to stay in the privacy of your own home and even then it
might not be enough.

Luckily, most of this long
weekend was dry and sunny, enough so that my friends and I could venture into San Francisco once more.
I love visiting the city when I’m not behind the wheel. I’ll be GPS any day! As
a belated birthday event, I’ve requested a visit to the Walt
Disney Museum
located at the Presidio in San
Francisco and ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery. Okay ice
cream was a request from the driver but after all that ice cream talk, I wanted
some too. Some of my other friends were concerned it might be too cold for ice
cream but we lucked out yet again for SF, it was a beautiful sunny day. By the
time we did get ice cream though, I’d have to admit, it was a bit chilly but after
driving thru SF (4 miles took almost 30
minutes!) and waiting in line for about 15 minutes, we were getting ice
cream even if we were in the middle of a snow storm! It was worth every traffic
light, every crazy angry driver, every honk, and every second in line! A happy
belated birthday indeed!

The museum was mainly
about the life of Walt Disney who is such an amazing accomplished person. Going
through his life, you’ll come to find, like everyone else, his life was not
short of hardships and failures but one thing that differed was his will to
dream and to make those dreams come true. He was daring and never gave up. Reading about his
accomplishments makes me feel a little unaccomplished. By the time he was 16
(15 in reality) he was brave enough to volunteer to be a member of the Red
Cross for the military. When he returned at the age of 20, he was able to get a
job doing what he loved and was getting paid $50 a month. That may not sound
like a lot but to put things into perspective, an entire meal back in those
days only cost about 0.20-0.30 cents! I looked at a menu from then and couldn’t
help but laugh because for a meal now, we’d need to move that decimal a couple
of places back. His life is inspiring and proves that dreams do come true but
not without hard work. So bottom line, dream big and don’t give up.

So a couple of weeks ago
while I was at work comparing lunches with my manager, a small discussion of
pesto came about and ever since then, I’ve been meaning to try something.
Normally pesto is fresh basil, parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and olive oil which
is great but I wanted to have something that was slightly healthier than the
normal version of pesto so I came up with my own version.

The spinach has returned!
It’s been a while since one of my recipes included spinach and plus I needed to
find a way to use up my spinach. Sandwiches weren’t cutting it for me anymore.
I didn’t have pine nuts handy at home and so instead of pine nuts I decided to
use almonds instead. Again being naturally lazy when given the opportunity, I
will always choose the lazy method. Instead of digging out a food processor to
make my spinach pesto, I decided a blender was enough…not quite. I couldn’t get
the pesto to the consistency that I want it to be, so that is why I decided to
add a little bit of milk. It didn’t make much difference in flavor, just made
it creamier if anything. Overall a success, tastes just like any old pesto
sauce I’ve ever had and it has slightly more nutrients with the spinach and
milk instead of just oil.